This year’s Bristol Radical History Festival focused on the persistent threats of racism, xenophobia and, of course, our radical collective resistance to it across Ireland and Britain, reports LYNNE WALSH

EUROPEAN governments have either given up trying to save lives in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas, in the Channel, at the borders between Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria, Spain and Morocco, and along the bloc’s eastern borders, leaving people to drown, starve or freeze to death — or they have actively made their borders deadlier.
At the same time, European states have also deliberately hindered and even tried to criminalise the activities of the activists and civil society organisations that have stepped in where they left off.
About 1,500 people drowned in the central Mediterranean this year, according to the International Organisation for Migration’s latest estimates. And over 31,400 people were returned to Libya.

